> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.kingmel.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # What is this place, and why did you make it? - URL: https://www.kingmel.com/what-is-this-place-and-why-did-you-make-it/ - Published: 2026-08-27T13:55:50.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-27T13:56:08.000Z - Author: Melissa King The Gritz Lab is a space for creators to design and construct highly experimental escape hatches, portals, and different kinds of holes for people to fall into. I made this place because I needed it, and I figured other people might need it too. Or enjoy it. Or wallow in it. Or hate it on sight. Do what you want, seriously – I'm not your supervisor. I've been thinking about putting together something like this for a while, but recently, I read a couple of things that finally pushed me into action. Two stories, to be precise. Both fiction, both horror, and both by writers I know to be brilliant. In both cases, the stories were submissions to a different publication I produce, and in both cases, I had to say no, and it really, really pissed me off. There wasn't anything *wrong* with the stories; they were bloody amazing. They just weren't – sanitised. They were raw, disturbing, powerful and NSFW. They were also gritty, full of expletives, a little scary, a little gory – we're not talking shock fiction or porn here, they just weren't – well – *suitable*. If I'd published them, I'd have earned an inbox full of complaints, a bunch of unsubs, and probably undone some creative alliances. Even in places where darker, grittier, more adult fiction is welcomed, I find there's an expectation that if you write darkness, you'll stop around the last third of the book and transform the story into a didactic wanking session with a happy ending, either for the protagonist, who has performed Moral Compliance, or for society (by punishing the protagonist, who failed to perform Moral Compliance). I wrote a whole essay full of examples earlier and then deleted it because who the hell wants to read my analysis of a bunch of other people's stories in an introductory post? You have to watch me; I tend to wander off on. I'll try putting it this way instead. Something very bad happened to me a while ago. While I was getting over the effects of it, I tried to write about it. I tried to write a "survivors story". I tried to write an "educational" article. I tried to write a work-book, and an allegorical fairy tale, and a kind-of-memoir where the characters were all insects, and nothing I tried worked, because I couldn't work out what the message was meant to be. I kept trying to force a veneer of "survival" and "triumph" over the top of the whole miserable tale, because that felt "suitable", but it didn't work, because I wasn't triumphant, I was almost destroyed, and I didn't really feel like a laudible survivor because really, it was just dumb fucking luck I wasn't dead. Now who the hell is going to publish that? Once I decided to make this site though, that long-since abandoned story crawled out of the grave and started writing itself (quite aggressively to be honest). It's decided to ressurect itself as a real memoir, with absolutely no bullshit hero dynamic, lesson, message, or moral victory. Instead, I am writing a completely true recollection of events, dropped into the middle of a fairly fucked up fictional horror story. Let's see just how far into the dark I can ride this thing. Woohoo! Finally, it feels right. This is how I tell that story. Here. Anyway, this experimental space is intended as a kind of fortress (for fuckers who write fearless fiction? A Fearless Fucker's Fortress of Fiction? A Fearless Fuckers Fiction Forge. Forge is better, yeah?) and I've invited some amazing writers to come play with me here, to see what we can create in a place where the walls aren't made of morality and even truly shitty characters don't have to be punished just to reassure a particular subset of pearl-clutching readers who become upset when art doesn't painstakingly depict all of the problematic societal constructs they cling to like terrified children. That was a ridiculously long sentence. At the risk of slapping unwanted “meaning” onto what we're producing here, horror and misery, dark humour and bleak, miserable dystopia heal wounds, breaks curses, and dispels fears. What is written here is for the people who crave the darkness; wallow in it, drown in it, go to sleep with it pumping through their veins, and then get up the next day a little lighter for it. **What else do I need to know about this place?** Right there on the home page, it says "An experimental dark writers collective". We’re going to try a lot of different stuff. We’re going to do a monthly author chat called “Lie of the month Club”. The first edition is will be live soon. We'll do a monthly "Dark Microfiction" edition and invite readers to contribute. If you’re familiar with another publication I edit and you’re saying “hey, you stole that idea from REDACTED” well sure, I did, if you can steal your own ideas, plus this version will have swear words, and things that need trigger warnings and maybe a priest. My thing is different! Some of us are also going to have a go at doing a podcast and record audio versions of our serials and stories. Also, not everything here is free. Writers will choose what they want to paywall, while collectively maintaining a good supply of free material as well. We have to lure you dark-hearted fuckers into our gingerbread house somehow, don't we? I won’t speak for the others anyway; they can write their own introductions and tell you what they’ll be sharing and how they’ll go about it. If they want to. I'm not telling anyone what to write. If they want to fill page after page with an endless repeating stream of "Barnaby Joyce Fucks His Mechanical Bull All Night Long," I guess that's what we'll publish. I'm here for that, actually. It kind of screams bumper sticker, yeah? **TL;DR** The Gritz Lab is a brand new collaborative space for dark hearted writers to write for dark hearted readers without pandering to performative outrage or hysterical fear of real adult conversations. If you don’t think that any of this is a good idea, and you really enjoy censorship and polite writing filled with false wanky messages of hope, salvation, and morality, then thank you for stopping by; it’s been delightful, but it’s time to take your pearls and fuck off. The weird kids have got work to do.